About version 3.x: The learning curve is steep; operations are conducted in pipelines, making basic menus sparse, with modal dialogue boxes in which the work is done. There is no programming language. It loads Excel files, preserving variable names.

On Macintouch.com, Robin Lake noted its ability to handle a large number of variables and its strong regression tools. Arthur Busbey wrote “this is the envy of more than one Windows person I have showed it to. It has some great niche graphics for the earth sciences that you can't easily get anywhere else. If you have a lot of data to plot, or repeated graphs of the same kind to draw, it's not very flexible. e.g. if you want to plot graphs with a large number of lines (something I do often) I have to go through and set colour of each line individually.”

Dr. Jake Bundy wrote, “Surprisingly useful for multivariate analysis, but with some severe annoyances, e.g. writes all the data to new worksheets, meaning they are no longer connected. The best feature is the popup window next to the graph sheet listing the variables in the worksheet. If you are interested in hunting for
correlations (say), it makes it easy to set var1 as your X, and then use the arrow key to flick rapidly between var2 -> var3 ... -> varN,
and watch the plots change.”

Aabel 3.04 was set up mainly to increase Snow Leopard compatibility and add bug fixes; in addition, users can now declare whether empty cells should be undefined or set to zero in hierarchical and K-means cluster analyses. 3.06 was the final PowerPC-compatible version.

About version 4: aabel NG, or Aabel 4, was a massive rewrite, with a modern user interface. It is now a 64-bit program.

ChartSmith

Designed for OS X, ChartSmith is not burdened with cross-platform baggage and uncertainty á la DeltaGraph, but does much of the same work — making charts and graphs for publication, with analytical features. It allows Excel importing and PowerPoint and Charts exporting. Graphics are snazzy, with AppleScript controls. We wanted to like it, we really did, but we found the interface awkward and unnecessarily driven by OS X ideals. Keynote users may find the integration features handy; you can import data from Excel.

The program has multiple axis types, trend lines, error bars, templates, support for Retina displays, and compatibility with Gatekeeper, and some bug fixes for AppleScript.

Citrin

Citrin does interactive scientific graphing and curve fitting, providing charts, such as scatter and line series, bar, column, area, 3-D, ternary scatter, pie, polar, box and whisker, histograms, probability charts, etc.; curve fitting with built-in functions, as well as a module for user-defined, non-linear curve fitting with an interactive graphical interface; flexible capabilities for applying error bars; full Unicode support, diverse graphic export formats; and native worksheets that can import and store large data sets from diverse data formats. It allows Excel and other imports and PDF, Photoshop, and other exports. Citrin also provides real-time, two-way interaction between charts and their source worksheets, and claims to be the first relatively low-cost commercial program to allow data brushing to highlight data interrelationships.

An exploratory data analysis package, DataDesk is developed by Paul Velleman, Professor in Cornell's School of Industrial and Labor relations, once a student of Bell Labs’ famed John Tukey. (800) 573-5121, +1-607-257-1000.

A demo version is available (8/23/2011). The Mac version is at parity with the Windows version, and there is an Excel plug-in version, DataDesk XL. The strength and weakness of DataDesk is its visual environment:

While it implements many traditional statistics techniques suitable for data from planned experiments and sample surveys, Data Desk’s true strength is its powerful tools for data exploration. ... speed and linked views make Data Desk unsurpassable for exploring any set of data. ... Select points in one plot or table and see those points highlight instantly in all other plots. Modify a data value or parameter and see all relevant plots and table update immediately...

Dick Furnas wrote:

DataDesk is superb for exploratory data analysis. A student version is bundled with several textbooks Velleman has been involved in. DataDesk was originally developed for the Mac and makes splendid use of drag and drop, clickable, live interfaces and everything a Mac user might wish for (you can lasso points in a graph and the data values from the underlying data tables will be highlighted, and vice/versa).

Developer David Adalsteinsson wrote that this $40 program was written in Cocoa, and so is native to OS X. It grew out of DataTank and shares underlying graphics code, but is limited to two-dimensional graphing; the design is “simple and powerful,” with an emphasis on publication-quality output. Amazingly, DataGraph reads in CricketGraph files, creates animations, and can be called from Automator or the command line.

Version 2.2 adds a command for drawing lines between points, a search strip, and a Step option. Version 3.0 adds support for multiple graphs in a single file, automatic updating of combined graphs, Point style options, and other updates.

DataTank

Winner of the 2005 Apple Design Award for Best Scientific Computing Solution. From their web site:

DataTank is designed for scientific visualization, data mining, and algorithm development, but it is flexible enough to be used for a variety of other uses as well. Like other scientific visualization programs DataTank uses OpenGL to draw 3D graphics, and supports transparency, interactive rotation, multiple light sources and camera positions. DataTank uses the strength of Quartz to generate publication quality vector-graphics as PDF/EPS or anti-aliased bitmaps for use in web pages and presentations. ... DataTank enables interactive exploration of large data sets. ... DataTank will perform incremental evaluation, treating data sets with millions of data points and hundreds of thousands of entries the same way as a simple data set that is typed in manually.

Dennis Kahlbaum wrote: “Excellent support. Program is extremely flexible and can be used for graphics, statistics, visualizations, etc; Can produce animations of contours (lines and shading) generated from variably spaced data. Can use ESRI shapfiles.” We add that it is scriptable.

DeltaGraph is a dual-platform charting program developed on the Mac, now cross-platform; owned for a time by SPSS, it has been at Red Rock Software for years now. DeltaGraph now has Mac/Windows feature parity and statistical abilities including linear and nonlinear regression. (Amusingly, Cricket Graph did both in 1987.) In 2010, after four years, version 6 was finally released, with a revised interface, cross-platform-friendly files, support for third-party spot colors in PDF and EPS export, and international text support.

GMT - The Generic Mapping Tools

A collection of command-line tools that run on all Unix-like systems, including Mac OS X. See gmt.soest.hawaii.edu for details. Many of the main developers (including me) use Mac OS X. (Description by Paul Wessel)

Grapher / Graphing Calculator

This software was made available free of charge by Apple with the first PowerPC systems to show off the awesome power of the 60 MHz PowerPC 601 chips (which in some ways were quite speedy, but most people probably found themselves wishing for a Quadra). They have continued on, in various forms, through to OS X, and can actually do a number of useful things. Steve Martin of the University of Melbourne suggested its inclusion, noting that the new verison of Grapher allows importing sets of points and includes sample files. This only works for graphing functions.

Graphical Analysis

From Vernier Solutions, Graphical Analysis is, like DeltaGraph and KaleidaGraph, a program to create charts and graphs for presentation. Like DeltaGraph and KaleidaGraph, it lets you “create and print graphs, data tables, text, FFTs, and histograms.
Perform automatic curve fits, and add models with adjustable parameters to your graphs.
Calculate statistics, tangents, integrals, and interpolations.” But unlike its more popular (on the Mac, anyway) brethren, Graphical Analysis does not seem to be getting updates.

Igor Pro

Igor Pro is a charting and data analysis program published by WaveMetrics, Inc. “IGOR Pro is an interactive software environment for experimentation with scientific and engineering data and for the production of publication-quality graphs and page layouts.” IGOR's data files are cross-platform. Analysis includes curve fitting, peak analysis, signal processing, and descriptive statistics. As of version 6, Igor Pro is a Universal Binary, and expanded statistics are available, along with built in FIR and IIR filtering.

Kaleidagraph is a (dual-platform) data analysis and graphing application published by Synergy Software. A demo is available. Kaleidagaph's promotional materials promise essentially everything offered by DeltaGraph and then some. The Universal Binary update did not appear until August 2009, but it came with Intel-Mac optimization at long last, along with the use of QuickTime for export, which provides extra features.

Users have written in to say that Kaleidagraph can easily tabulate, normalize, and combine data sets, make numerical calculations of theoretical expressions for comparisons with the measured data points, make publication-quality graphs with little effort.

James P. Conner pointed out, "KaleidaGraph can handle 1,000 columns and one million rows, while Delta Graph is (last time I looked) limited to 256 columns and 32K rows. Also, K-Graph's statistical functions have been expanded significantly in the last two releases, and are much more useful than D-Graph's." We’ll also note that it’s cheaper.

Magic Maps

From Evan Miller, Magic Apps is a tool for analyzing time-series data on a map. Maps; states and countries automatically change color to match values, with customization for the colors and numeric ranges (colors can also be set for text fields). Data can be entered manually or via various file formats; built in templates are provided, and KML and ESRI files can be imported. A timeline shows historical averages and totals with a "play" feature to show changes by period. There are mathematical and geographical functions included, with CSV output.

MagicPlot is used for scientific and engineering data analysis, graphing, nonlinear curve fitting, and multi-peak fitting. The Pro version program has publication quality customizable plots with multiple axes, text table import with previews, data manipulation, FFT, integration, differentiation, histograms, and other statistics, with multiple undos (some of these features are on the free student version as well).

The software is relatively easy to use and nicely featured, but as a Java program, does not use standard Mac open/close dialogue boxes, so finding files may be hard depending on your file structure. The system is simple enough — fill a table with data, add formulas if desired, choose the type of table you want, and select a large number of options from the dialogue boxes which appear next. It takes a short time to get acquainted but is far easier to learn than many graphing programs; basic statistics are provided. The program can guess the most appropriate fit line, but lets users choose a method if desired.

Matplotlib

Matplotlib is a pure python plotting library with the goal of making publication quality plots using a syntax familiar to matlab users. The library uses Numeric for handling large data sets and supports a variety of output backends. The program was originally written by John D. Hunter, who died of cancer in 2012 at the age of 44.

ParallelSets

ParallelSets provides visualization for categorical data, including surveys and inventory; provides an alternative to simple cross-tabs. Importing is via CSV only, but Excel, SPSS, LibreOffice, and other software allows CSV export. Created by Shree Chhatwal, Shilpa Sharma, Robert Kosara, and Caroline Ziemkiewicz with support of various United States government agencies. Thanks, Chris Lucianu.

Prism

GraphPad’s Prism is an excellent platform for graphing, providing the usability of graphing software with many advanced statistical capabilities. Numerous graph types are available along with flexible regression curving. See our main Mac statistics software page (listed under GraphPad).

pro Fit

pro Fit is a data analysis and plotting software package from QuantumSoft. Dave [not me] wrote: "...it has an extensive Applescript dictionary, ability to handle large data sets well (I've done graphs with hundreds of thousands of points), can be extended by writing plug ins or adding formulas that you create, does great curve fitting. I consider it much more feature complete than Kaliedagraph and far more intuitive than Igor Pro. They have excellent customer support, usually getting back to you within 24 hours if you have a bug report or feature request." We have observed that ProFit is frequently updated which indicates it is well supported (2010).

“pro Fit is a Macintosh (Mac OS) application for data/function analysis, plotting, and curve fitting. It is used by scientists and engineers to analyze their measurements and the mathematical models they use to describe them. Scientists or students can define any mathematical function and use it to model their data, finding by linear or nonlinear curve fitting the function parameters that best describe their observations. Moreover, they can use a number of tools for the mathematical and statistical analysis of functions and data sets, and they can produce aesthetically pleasing graphical representations for their scientific reports.”

PublishPlot

PublishPlot was created to turn any collection of data (in flexible plain-text formats) into publication-quality plots, written by a journal editor. The writer claims that all features of the plot can be customized, and that it can be scaled while conserving relative sizes; plots can be annotated with labels and arrows; and simple transformations are included. Available from the Mac App Store.

R with SEM add-on (free)

R is a general purpose open source statistics package (see the separate page on R for the Mac); there is an SEM (Structural Equation Models) add-on by John
Fox.

There is also a PLS package (Adam Naples wrote, “it’s kind of a less constrained, or exploratory SEM”) for R.

SciPy

For Linux and Windows but may be compiled on MacsReport updated: 1/5/2011

SciPy is a library of scientific tools for Python which supplements the Numeric module. SciPy includes modules for graphics and plotting, optimization, integration, special functions, signal and image processing, genetic algorithms, ODE solvers, and others.

Thunderplot

Thunderplot, a native Mac program, was created for quick data visualization; a native Mac program. Its programmer, Vadim Kalinsky, wrote: “It’s parses contaminated data (like ‘64 bytes from 8.8.8.8’), supports numeric and time axis, expressions, multiple datasets, multiple curves, works quickly with large datasets, has simple and responsive interface, and exports to jpeg/png/etc. It is available in the Apple Store, and a non-sandboxed (but signed) version is available. It’s free for professors/students (.edu e-mail address needed).”

Our initial impressions are that it is very easy to use, and the snapshot feature should prove very handy to web publishers.

We will most likely be posting a review and some photos.

Veusz

A surprisingly capable free program, Veusz is a relatively new creation which is designed to create publication read output in PDF or PostScript, with export to SVG, EMF, and PNG. Data can be read from text, CSV, or FITS files, and can be manipulated within the program. There is an object-bsaed interface along wtih command line and Python-based scripting; it can be used as a Python pltting module. Charts include X-Y (with error bars and such), line and function, contour, image, stepped/histogram, bar, vector field, box, polar, and many others, with broken and multiple axes.

VTK (Visualization Toolkit)

Pre-compiled only for Windows; may be compiled from source code for OS X
Latest version: 5.1 (listing updated 8/2012)

The Visualization ToolKit (VTK) is a system for 3D computer graphics, image processing, and visualization with several interface layers. In VTK applications can be written directly in C++, Tcl, Java, or Python.

VTK supports a wide variety of visualization algorithms including scalar, vector, tensor, texture, and volumetric methods; and advanced modeling techniques like implicit modelling, polygon reduction, mesh smoothing, cutting, contouring, and Delaunay triangulation. Moreover, we have directly integrated dozens of imaging algorithms into the system so you can mix 2D imaging / 3D graphics algorithms and data. Our goal is to make the software easy enough for any computer literate person to use.

VVI Graph Builder

Lance Bland, the developer, wrote: "In addition to all the
standard features, Vvidget includes advanced features such as
floating ticks, curves that can extend beyond the graph frame or can
be truncated and literally hundreds of tunable parameters. 3D types
rotate in real time and even the graph labels can be rotated in their
own plane, independent of the main graph rotation. Data can be
inserted through a list of numbers or by point and click
methods." The same developer provides software such as
QuadraticLab for other math functions. The software appears to be under very active development.

In version 10.6, VVidge has a new, improved manual with tutorials; drag-and-drop of graphs to Cocoa projects in the Interface Builder; and other features.

Vvidget and Graph

Lance Bland, the developer, wrote: "In addition to all the
standard features, Vvidget includes advanced features such as
floating ticks, curves that can extend beyond the graph frame or can
be truncated and literally hundreds of tunable parameters. 3D types
rotate in real time and even the graph labels can be rotated in their
own plane, independent of the main graph rotation. Data can be
inserted through a list of numbers or by point and click
methods." The same developer provides software such as
QuadraticLab for other math functions. The software appears to be under very active development.

In version 10.6, VVidge has a new, improved manual with tutorials; drag-and-drop of graphs to Cocoa projects in the Interface Builder; and other features.

Currently, Graph is free but has ads; VVidget is $4 from the Mac App Store and is the same program without ads. Versions are available for free and $2 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Others

Grace is a WYSIWYG 2D plotting tool for the X Window System that runs on “practically any version of Unix-like OS.”

Ctioga is an open source command-line plotting system written in Ruby. It has been designed to make rapidly publication-quality graphes.